


soft across my lungs

by neyvenger (jjjat3am)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7948525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gary and David, and two dinners, a few years apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soft across my lungs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> Oh boy. So, this isn't the United fic I promised, but it's one anyway. For Rach and the occasion of her meeting Gary Neville.
> 
> Title from Beach Slang.

 

 

“Hey, Gaz? Can I come over?”

 

David hates the hitch in his voice, digs his knuckles into the sheets on his bed, the drag of cotton on his skin anchoring. His apartment is quiet except for Gary’s voice crackling across the phone line with an affirmation.

 

“Alright, I’ll be right there. Don’t order anything, I’ll make dinner. Thanks, Gaz.”

 

And suddenly he can’t get out of there fast enough, throwing on his jacket, almost running to the door, and then back to the bedroom for his wallet and keys. He takes his kit bag, but nothing else. There’s a change of clothes for him at Gary’s at this point. 

 

David just wants out, out of his empty apartment, where every sounds seems to echo back at him, where the spice racks and his closet have been organized and reorganized so many times he could assemble everything in the dark, where the walls are closing in around him, making it harder to breathe.

 

He stops at a grocery store, high end. Gary doesn’t have a lot of food in his house, seems to exist mostly off take out, meals from the club and family sized packs of Starbursts. It’s not a proper athlete's diet and David keeps telling him that, that it’ll come after him when he retires. He supposes it’s weird to be thinking about retirement at 21. Gary always says he worries too much.

 

Gary is usually right.

 

And maybe a little bit of weight gain would look good on Gary. Smooth out the stark spaces between his ribs, give David one less thing to count at night when he can’t fall asleep. 

 

Nobody recognizes him at the grocery store, though he probably looks out of place with his hoodie and ripped jeans. He catches sight of his reflection in one of the windows, the blonde hair curling from the edges of his hood. He’ll shave when he comes to Gary’s.

 

The thing about Gary’s house is that it never feels too big or too quiet. Sometimes it’s just because Phil is underfoot, but mostly David thinks it’s got everything to do with Gary. 

 

He’s never still, even for a second, always on the trail of one project or another, paperwork and play diagrams strewn in haphazard piles all over the furniture, waiting for David to put them in order, so Gary can find what he needs quicker.

 

He’s not even completely still when he’s asleep, his eyelids twitching and his fingers clawing at the comforter, his elbows constantly in David’s ribs. But he’s always so warm, like all the activity is going on under his skin too.

 

David doesn’t bother with the doorbell, just types in his security code and uses his key, carefully navigating the hallway with his bags, dropping to line up his shoes along Gary’s.

 

“It’s me!” he yells out in response to a warbled greeting from further inside the house. “Is Phil over, or am I cooking just for us?”

 

Phil isn’t visiting tonight, so he’s got Gary just to himself. Gary moves his papers and books to the kitchen table, while David lays out his ingredients. They work in companionable silence and David listens for Gary’s pen scratching on paper over the sound of the extractor hood. 

 

He stirs in some cream into the risotto, because Gary likes it that way, even when it’s not on their list of acceptable foodstuff.

 

Gary goes to sleep at 9.30 on the dot every evening, and David likes to stay up till two, but he gets ready for bed with him anyway. He brushes his teeth watching their reflections side by side in the mirror, laughs when Gary slips in the shower in a flurry of loud curses.

 

David counts Gary’s breaths after they even out, reaching out under the sheets to rest his knuckles against the grooves between his ribs. He watches the shadows dance against the opposite wall and waits for sleep to come. 

  
  


*

  
  


“Sorry, I’m late for dinner, Gaz. Traffic was murder. Did you order for us already?”

 

Gary hadn’t, but he’s ordered them some wine, and he’s got to sweep papers off the table to make room for it. He couldn’t get away with working in just any fancy restaurant, but the staff at Hotel Football are probably used to it. 

 

“You look good.”

 

Gary laughs at him like he’s just told the best joke ever, even thought David had been completely serious. He’s never known how to take a compliment. Gary’s dressed up for the occasion, a suit and a red tie, with a matching handkerchief. David can just barely make out the top of the crest from where it’s poking out of the pocket. Layered over his heart, like always. In uniform, even after he’s been a few years retired.

 

Through, then again, it had never been just an uniform with Gary. Not the way they’d been with David. The end instead of the means.

 

“What are you working on right now? I never get MNF on TV in Los Angeles.”

 

He watches Gary talk, his arms waving about in boundless energy, growing almost frantic when he talks about Jamie Carragher and whatever insult he’d thought of for Liverpool this week. David doesn’t watch as many football matches these days, but he’s always loved listening to Gary talk them open.

 

As the evening wears on, something in David loosens. Somehow he always expects that, when they meet up again, things will be different, but it always turns out that he shouldn’t have worried so much. 

 

Eventually, the restaurant closes down and they have to go, spilling into the street, laughing hysterically at some old story.

 

David’s eyes catch on the shape of Old Trafford, rising up against the skyline. It seems bigger than he remembers it. Less welcoming.

 

“Hey, do you wanna come over?”

 

Gary asks and David swings around to look at him. He’s bigger than he remembers him too. The spaces between his ribs have probably filled out and softened, leaving David one less thing to count before he falls asleep. 

 

But there’s still that spark in his eyes when he looks at David. He’s always looked at him like that, on the field and in the mirror, and in the dark, breathing soft words against David’s skin.

 

David nods, and they set off together across the sidewalk, their hands occasionally brushing between them, their silhouettes dancing in the reflection on the slick asphalt.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know the timeline on this. Somewhere before he met Victoria for the first and then sometime after retirement for the second.
> 
> Hotel Football is a hotel that Gary co-owns with Ryan Giggs and it's located right next to Old Trafford. It has a restaurant? I think?


End file.
